The Simplistic Reductionism That Sees Only Good or Evil

Charlie is taking a well-deserved break this week. In his absence, we'll be remembering some of his greatest hits from throughout this election cycle. Here's his reflection on the Pope's speech before Congress, originally published on September 24, 2015.

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.

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Well, OK, then.

And here was the Pope of Rome, standing at the Speaker's rostrum in the United States House of Representatives, the legislative body in which Madison ultimately served, and talking with quiet modesty—and quiet quiet, occasionally edging on inaudibility—about the great issues of the day, and about what the responsibility of elected officials are. God only knows, you should pardon the expression, what Mr. Madison would have thought of the event itself, but it's hard to believe he would argue with Papa Francesco's assertion that:

Your own responsibility as members of Congress is to enable this country, by your legislative activity, to grow as a nation. You are the face of its people, their representatives. You are called to defend and preserve the dignity of your fellow citizens in the tireless and demanding pursuit of the common good, for this is the chief aim of all politics. A political society endures when it seeks, as a vocation, to satisfy common needs by stimulating the growth of all its members, especially those in situations of greater vulnerability or risk. Legislative activity is always based on care for the people. To this you have been invited, called and convened by those who elected you.

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It was not the stemwinder people expected. It was more of a homily than an address. Very likely, the Pope was trying as best he could to be a grateful guest of the nation. "He knew where he was speaking," said Senator Bernie Sanders. "He didn't want to be rude or antagonistic. But I think his calling out for social justice, his talking about income inequality and social justice, his talking about creating an economy and a culture that works for everybody, rather than just the few, is a very, very powerful message on its own."

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Buttonholed at the top of the staircase just outside the House chamber, Sanders was positively aglow over Papa Francesco's choice of Dorothy Day as one of the four examples of the American spirit. Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. are automatic. (Although the sight of John Lewis nodding and smiling when the pope name-checked Dr. King got the air in the press gallery curiously dusty, at least for me.) But it was the other two names, Day and Thomas Merton, whom the pope used as an example of the prayerful life and the wish for peace, that got heads turning. Merton was a monk whose writings were the bulwark of liberal Catholicism from the 1950's until his accidental death in 1968, and Day, the founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was a genuine radical, an avatar of progressive Catholicism for decades. Day was a devout pacifist and a ferocious advocate for social justice, who once took on the inexcusable Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York when Spellman used seminarians as strike-breakers against the archdiocese's grave-diggers.

(How radical was she? William F. Buckley, whose Catholicism stopped at the Council of Trent, once derided her as slovenly, dangerous, and not a Catholic. Dorothy Day is now a candidate for sainthood. WFB is, ah, not.)

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During the brawl with Spellman, Day wrote in her newspaper, The Catholic Worker:

A Cardinal, ill-advised, exercised so overwhelming a show of force against the union of poor working men. There is a temptation of the devil to that most awful of all wars, the war between the clergy and the laity."

And on Thursday, Papa Francesco told the Congress:

But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps. We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place.

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He did not use Dorothy Day idly here. He knew exactly what he was doing, and that is what put the glow on Bernie Sanders. "I think this would be perhaps one of the very, very few times that somebody as radical, that somebody as committed to social justice as Dorothy Day's name has been mentioned," Sanders said. "Somebody can check it out, but I suspect that her name has not been mentioned terribly often."

The one thing we did learn from the speech was that this pope is a master of strategic ambiguity—almost Jesuitical in that regard, one might say. This was most evident in the very brief attention he paid in his address to what we laughably call the "social issues" in our politics. When he said, "The Golden Rule also reminds us of our responsibility to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development," the zygote-fondling caucus went wild but then, as a real world example of what he was talking about, he pivoted to this:

This conviction has led me, from the beginning of my ministry, to advocate at different levels for the global abolition of the death penalty. I am convinced that this way is the best, since every life is sacred, every human person is endowed with an inalienable dignity, and society can only benefit from the rehabilitation of those convicted of crimes.

You could feel the air go out of the congresscritters who'd leaped to their feet. Both of Trey Gowdy's faces fell.

And when he talked about his concern for The Family, he did so in such a way that almost anyone could take almost anything from what he said.

It is my wish that throughout my visit the family should be a recurrent theme. How essential the family has been to the building of this country! And how worthy it remains of our support and encouragement! Yet I cannot hide my concern for the family, which is threatened, perhaps as never before, from within and without. Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family. I can only reiterate the importance and, above all, the richness and the beauty of family life.

That could be any family, constituted however it is. This is why you don't fck with The Society. They will fck your stuff up for you. It is clear that Papa Francesco's definition of "social issues" is very different from that held by, say, Ben Carson, who was in the House today, by the way.

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The Pope was far more direct, and far more detailed, in his condemnation of the arms trade, in his extended discussion about the environmental crisis, and in his lengthy and passionate disquisition about our obligation to what the Gospels call the least among us. (Even here, he wrongfooted them. Out along the aisle, Paul Ryan bobbed his head when the Pope talked about "subsidiarity," which is a Catholic doctrine that Ryan doesn't understand any more than he understands theoretical physics, but that he uses as a theological basis for his zombie-eyed granny-starving. However, the Pope actually talked about "reciprocal subsidiarity," which is a whole 'nother thing. Again, and we told you this before, Paul, don't fck with the Society.) Alas for his audience, the pope lost his place early on and omitted the most powerful section of his prepared text.

Here I think of the political history of the United States, where democracy is deeply rooted in the mind of the American people. All political activity must serve and promote the good of the human person and be based on respect for his or her dignity. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" (Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776). If politics must truly be at the service of the human person, it follows that it cannot be a slave to the economy and finance.

The Vatican press office hustled to tell the assembled media that the passage had been left out by accident—I give Papa Francesco credit for doing as well as he did, since English is about his fourth language—and that the pope stands by it. I tend to believe the papal flacks because the idea of poverty as a new kind of slavery popped up several times in the address, and Papa Francesco made sure to link it not only to what Dr. King once called the original "promissory note" in the Declaration of Independence, but also to the struggle to end actual slavery under Lincoln, and the struggle to end the de facto slavery of Jim Crow under Dr. King. There wasn't an accidental syllable in the whole speech. And, for one morning, the spirit of Dorothy Day walked the halls of the United States Capitol. I'd be a liar if I said I didn't feel that was a blessing.